I use both stave and staff depending on my mood.
“That instrument uses only a single stave.”
“He didn’t use a ruler to draw those staff lines.”
Sometimes one sounds better than the other. It’s weird.
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Well there are in the language(s) already. Lewis Carroll, usually a prissy stickler in the realm of spelling and usage (he insisted that “ca’n’t” needed two apostrophes, one for N and one for O), was in favor of fewer doubled letters than British usage demanded, wanting them only at the conclusion of accented syllables. (He allowed that “parallel” was an exception, because “we are constrained by the etymology,” which I’ve never quite understood.)
I’ve encountered very precise and thoughtful British people who insist that “orientate” is correct precisely because it does match the noun “orientation,” and such usages need to correspond. (As with “orchestrate / orchestration.”) They were especially hard on the American use of the word “interpretive” (and I’ve even seen that pointed out in a UK review of a US scholarly work as “an illiterate fault”), because the noun is “interpretation” and not “interpretion.” I’ll have to remember “transportate” the next time I get into such a conversation.
Another one: An Historic Event. Why ‘an’ instead of ‘a’? The only excuse for using ‘an’ before an ‘h’ is if you don’t pronounce the ‘h’, as in ‘hour’ or if you don’t pronounce it because of your accent, as a person speaking in cockney. But then that person would say, 'Oi live in an 'ouse on an ‘ill…’.
Why? Because we borrowed (some of) these words from French, where the aitch is aspirated. But yes, it’s a strange hangover given that we now enunciate those aitches.
Speaking of which, “herb” has an aitch on the front 
O know, and as I pronounce the ‘h’ in ‘herb’, I use an ‘a’. If I were to pronounce it without the ‘h’, I would use an ‘an’. AFAIK, there are no exceptions, except for this completely misplaced use of ‘an’ before ‘historic’.
I would want to avoid a listener mistaking ‘a historical’ for ‘ahistorical’, so I keep the n.
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But here in the States, ahistorical would be pronounced AY-historical whereas our slovenly version of English 
would pronounce “a historical” as uh-historical
I just realize there’s actually a really simple explanation for the objection posted in the OP.
Britons never, never, never shall be staves…
Dan,
You are beginning to make me
“Rue Britannia.”